It’s the constant drumbeat of “AI will take your job.”
It’s the constant news of “layoffs because AI makes us more productive.”
It’s the constant background discussion of UBI because no one will have jobs anymore.
It’s knowing that, in the US, UBI will never come.
It’s the feeling that the billionaires of Silicon Valley are getting rich and there isn’t even a “learn to code” path to wealth anymore.
It’s knowing that data centers will create problems in your neighborhood: the price of power and water will go up, the amount of undeveloped land down, and you don’t even get jobs out of it.
For fuck’s sake, it’s not about the thousands of Mag7 tech workers losing their jobs. That’s just a symptom, like all the other symptoms, of this weirdly dystopian future that the AI companies keep telling us is inevitable.
It might be literally impossible but that's what the numbers are.
(That can of course change very quickly, yes)
2. Culture workers are a big part of who sets the narrative for the general population - especially young people.
3. Less than 1/5 of Gen Z are optimistic about AI and the number is falling: (https://news.gallup.com/poll/708224/gen-adoption-steady-skep...)
The current wave of AI companies did this to themselves. Had things moved more slowly and actively worked with all the affected industries, I suspect people would be far less interested in seeing the technology fail.
The former either seem puzzled about the general public's anger at AI or dismissive of it ("they don't really hate it - look at ChatGPT usage!", "they only hate it because they've been misled about water usage!" and so on).
Non-techies aren't as stupid as people in the tech industry think. Normies can see their social media feeds filling up with slop. They see people in their social circles who can no longer hold a normal conversation without feeding everything into ChatGPT. And - most importantly, I suspect - they are seeing the plan they've built their lives around - get your kids to do well in school, get them into college so they can have a good career and make enough to pay of the loans that plan will require - being casually dismissed by AI boosters ("they'll be plenty of jobs, we just don't know what they are yet!").
Here's a clue for people who don't understand the backlash: if you don't understand that stability has value on its own, then you lack a basic understanding of what more people actually care about.
I think that the concerns underlying the outrage are real and honestly valid, but the question I’m asking now isn’t “how to stop it” but “what now”? Because economies are cyclical and if it wasn’t AI it’d have been something else that would threaten our survival, and there are many good alternatives right now: climate change and war.
Checking MSN is a good alternative to archive.ph, or otherwise searching for the author and title?
The fearmongers will tell stories about biological or chemical weapons. It'll be things you could learn from a textbook - something like mercury molecules or cultivating rabies. People will vote to ban AI.
The puritans will clutch their pearls because it can be used to make porn they don't like. They'll vote to ban AI.
People who are afraid of losing their jobs will make tangential arguments about copyright violations. They'll vote to ban AI.
So citizens won't be allowed to use AI directly.
Instead, there will be regulatory capture. Microsoft and Apple will pay fees for compliance testing (bribes). Then they'll serve you a dumbed down version you can't escape. "I see you're trying to analyze numbers. Click here for a free signup to Office 365!".
The social media sites will make sure you still have access to create rage bait slop. That improves engagement.
Big software companies will pay for bug finding services. Small open source projects won't have the money.
If you're upset by AI, you should ask yourself if that's part of the plan. Because there's a lot of money to be made and power to be stripped from citizens if everything above comes true.
I just have trouble seeing how we get to there from here. Vote to ban AI? Has anything like that happened before?
Then you add in on top of that people hearing that everyone's job is in jeopardy, like right now, even if it's not really true. Plus rumors about how untrustworthy people like Sam Altman are. Not to mention that they are San Francisco elites. Lawsuits. Cozying up to Trump. Etc. It's not surprising most of the sentiment around AI is incredibly negative and getting more negative by the day.
Companies have their relationship with people, specifically employees, backwards. What percentage of companies out there are truly needed? What percentage solely exist because people have some surplus money to play with?
No one needs Microsoft or Google products. No one needs overpriced Apple crap. AI means jack shit to almost 100% of Americans. Streaming services are one bad day away from ruin. We’ve seen what piracy can do. Now we have faster, better internet. Food delivery services RIP. I buy so little from Amazon these days that I’m questioning the $15 per month value of Prime.
I hope we see society correct course and go back to how it was in the 90’s, before everything went to shit. No social media. No smart phones. Going out more. Less digital noise. Physical media from physical stores. The list goes on…
The time to have quit Prime was years ago, before the price hikes, the degradation of service, their complicity in the sale of counterfeit goods, etc. People didn't leave. They won. They know they can do what they want now.
There are three options:
1. AI owned by everyone
2. No AI
3. AI owned by billionaires
If you can make the masses fight for 2 instead of 1, then you guarantee that you don't get 1. If instead, the masses fight for 1, they've got a chance of getting it. You present AI as a false dichotomy: no AI or AI for billionaires. But 2 is a fantasy. There will be AI.
Any of us arguing for (1) get shouted down by the very people who would benefit most from it. The masses do the job of the billionaires.
Most utopian science fiction has AI doing the work and humans leading a life of leisure (e.g. Culture novels). Dystopian futures have AI keeping the rabble under control (Neil Asher's Owner Trilogy, Elysium). Time to choose folks.
For that matter, I wish those who were pro-AI were more strictly supportive of #1.
So pepl gonna riot and hunt down AI researchers and ceos and gonna burn them at the stake and then eat them :D. Musk will tell the sect members to hunt down Sam and the first one who bites his calves will be awarded a cybertruck.
Oh and data centers gonna be looted after hungry pepl eat the security guards and the mercenaries. Also remember everyone have rifles and gatlings buried in the garden :DDD.
Niice future.